The Value Delivery Process

Marketing is the process of Value Exchange. Value actually represents the exchange of tangible goods, services, ideas, time and maybe other intangibles between buyers and sellers. In fact, the key to a successful exchange is that each party has some value desired by the other. This has got an impact on the entire Marketing Concepts' philosophy design and implementation.

Building and enhancing strong Buyer-Seller Business Relationships is a strong part - coeffiecient of the Value Delivery Process. Most pragmatically, the Value Delivery Process is a Strategic Marketing approach that differentiates a customer-oriented organization from the traditional brand making and selling.

The Value Delivery Process brakes into three distinct phases:

A) Choosing the value where Marketing Management does its own “homework marketing” before any product exists (e.g. market segmentation, targeting and positioning as the essence of the first phase of strategic marketing.

B) Providing the value where Marketing Management decide the marketing mix criteria (For example, Marketing tactics) that will provide a strong competitive and thus a differential advantage (see previous posts).

C) Communicating the value where Marketing Management decides on the actual implementation process - utilization of the Sales Force, Sales Promotion , Advertising and other integrated communication tools.

There is though a differentiated Marketing approach into Value creation and substantiation of a differential advantage and this has got an impact upon Vargo and Lusch's academic work. Drawing on Vargo and Lusch (2004) and their Service–Dominant logic, “value is the outcome of co-creation between suppliers and customers”. They even stated that the customer is always a co-producer who participates in value creation through co-production. However, because they considered production a concept that is not in accordance with an inherent service logic (Vargo, 2008), they later replaced this statement with the expression “customers are always co-creators of value” (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). Other academics such as Grönroos (2008) and Ravald, (2010) in recent academic publications argue the specific Service-Dominant logic approach and ask for roles clarification of the different actors who participate in value creation on the ground “that the knowledge on how value is created, by whom and for whom is scarce”.

Vargo et al., (2008, pp. 146) acknowledging the issue claimed, “The roles of producers and consumers in a Goods-Dominant logic are distinct, whereas they in a Service-Dominant logic perspective are not”. In a recent article on the Service-Dominant logic, Vargo et al., (2008, pp.147) address this important feature of research on value creation as they suggest “...each instance of value creation is unique to and can only be assessed from the perspective of an individual service system...”. In full accordance with a Service-Dominant logic view, value is not created and delivered by the supplier, but emerges during usage in the customer’s process of value creation (Grönroos, 2006, 2008; Ballantyne and Varey, 2006; Gummesson, 2007).

This very last remark highlights the significance of Knowledge Workers' (e.g. Sales-Reps) contribution into the effective implementation of Marketing Strategies.